Quickly, Quickly

Okay, I am in English class right now, so I don't have time to write a whole entry. But you MUST SEE this picture of the ice cream I ate on Sunday. We went for Easter dinner at a classmate's grandparents' house, and I was challenged to a "Viking test". I had to eat an ice cream cone with ten scoops of ice cream, about a foot thick layer of guf (uncooked meringue) and a flødebolle on top. It fit in the palm of my hand (somewhat like a small baby) and weighed like three pounds. Insane. Anyway, here's a picture. I know, I look pretty chubby. :) And it could just be the ice cream I'm standing next to. Or... it could be the five kilos I've gained since I got here. Who knows?

Laziness Prevails

I'm too lazy to WRITE a blog, so I'll just sit and talk about my life. It's easier that way. Why didn't I think of this before? This way, y'all get to see my lovely face! :P

Vikings-The Original Crime Riders

Aight. Here's the dealio-yo. Things are going pretty great here in Denmark. Life is progressing as usual. I had a pretty cool weekend though. Well... let's start earlier. I had a rough week last week. We had to write this crazy essay called SRO, and it was intense. We had to read About a Boy by Nick Hornby, and then write an essay basically analyzing and interpreting the book and how it relates to family patterns in late modern society. It was supposed to be five to seven pages. In Danish. I think I managed to squeeze out about four and a half pages. Ugh. It was utterly exhausting. So on Friday, after we had turned it in, we had a mini party at Else's new apartment which involved lots of pizza and Across the Universe. That was a lot of fun. Good start to my weekend. Saturday, I slept in and chilled. Then my host mom took me for a walk out in Tornby so I could see what the water is like when it's up really high. The wind has been blowing a lot, so it was pretty crazy looking. Then we also went for a walk in the woods out there. It is a super beautiful area of the country, which I definitely look forward to showing my parents when we come to visit in summer of 2012, wink wink nudge nudge... Anywho, that was a good day. Sunday, we drove down to Aalborg to Bella's apartment. We picked her up, and then went to a sweet Viking museum called Lindholm Høje. It was really interesting. When we got there, we ran into Alex and her host dad, so that was cool. We got to wander around and learn about Vikings together. It was really cool. There was a museum part where they had artifacts and stories and movies and general museum things, (not to mention a gift shop where I could spend a fortune on things to bring home to the family) and there was also a big part outside where there were a bunch of old graves. And some sheep. :) Cute sheep. We petteded them. It was nice. Other than that, not much exciting stuff has happened. Mmm.... at the moment, my sister is cooking salmon for dinner, and I'm really excited. Muahaha. Salmon. Be jealous, Nebraskans! Oh! Another exciting thing that happened in the past couple weeks. I went to a Lucy Love concert. It was epic. If you don't know who she is, you should look her up. On Youtube. Daddy Was a DJ is a good song. Have fun. I'm gonna go eat salmon now, while listening to Natasja, the Danish reggae artist. Yes. Danish reggae. It does exist. In fact... look her up too. :) Ildebrand i byen is good. Have a great day. Love from Denmark to all y'all. <3

Erm... Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Oh yeah, and Happy Thanksgiving too. Okay, it has definitely been too long. In my own defense, it has been a very BUSY two months, and I did START a blog at least a couple times, only to get distracted and never finish. So I'll try to sum things up to the best of my ability. The last couple of months have been my best here in Denmark. First, I moved in with a new family. An AWESOME family. They are incredible, and I feel like they were specifically picked just for me, because we just click. Already within the first couple of weeks living here, my host sister and I were great friends. Then came Thanksgiving. My host mother prepared an amazing American Thanksgiving meal, and I was super impressed. Turns out that my host family lived in the states for a while, so they know what it's all about. I think for this blog entry, I'm just going to try to remember all the moments in the past few months where the thought "Whoa! Totally blogworthy!" came into my head, and just sort of list those. The next that I can think of would be my first Christmasy get-together with my friends. We were out at Stine's house in Astrup, and it was super fun. We were all sitting around the table drinking tea, when all the sudden people started pouring powdered sugar onto the table. I was confused. Then they took marzipan (which comes in tubes like cookie dough here) and rolling it in the powdered sugar. This, I learned, is a Danish Christmas tradition. They use all sorts of different things-food coloring, nougat (mmmmm....), hazelnuts, sprinkles, etc.-to mold and decorate the marzipan into basically whatever they want. (I'll see if I can attach a picture of this at the end.) While this was going on, I got my first real dose of Christmas-season homesickness. We had Christmas music playing from the living room, and most of it was in Danish, so I wasn't paying all that close attention to it. But as I was sitting, in the awesome and incredible (Really the ONLY word that can describe the feeling is hyggeligt which is something I can't say in English. Sorry.) things that were going on (and tearing up from the pure joy in the room that you could have cut with a knife-I know it sounds cheesy and ridiculous, but seriously. I almost cried.) I realized that the song that was playing in the background was in English. Naturally, I was intrigued, so I went into the living room to listen. I started the song over, and then I was standing in the corner listening to Christmas For Cowboys by John Denver. So then, I was standing in the corner bawling and hiding my face in my sweater. I was determined not to let my friends notice, but I'm sure they could probably hear me from the other room, so they picked up pretty quickly. I got a big group hug from a few of my friends, sobbed a little, wiped my snot on my sweater, and moved on with my day. Which, by the way, was awesome. We went sledding, ate our weight in marzipan, played some sort of children's board game, and laid in front of the fire to dry our socks. BUT! Ever since I started writing this blog entry (yes, it has been a work in progress for several days) I have been asked about eighty seven times to post a new blog entry. So I'm going to stop working now, and post as-is. If I think of more, I'll try to post it later on. But don't forget, I am super busy over here. Cut me a little slack. Haha.

The marzipan creations are at the to because I couldn't figure out how to move them to here. Sorry.

SNE!!

Okay.... I don't know what's going on with this blog. :) Probably just don't know how to use it properly. But anyway, I woke up this morning and everything was gorgeously covered in snow. So here's some pictures:

Jeg er en perle ;)

Wow. I just had the most legit hour and a half long conversation with Ginesta. It was awesome. We talked about everything from the role of women to Danish culture to me getting married and so on and so forth. This is going to be a super short blog post. But it was an incredible conversation. :) Also, proof that I have had an impact on this family: Tonight at dinner, Diana picked up the cat, held her above her head, and started singing the Circle of Life, and Ginesta said "She's crazy!" Muahahaha. I am so proud! I also taught Ginesta to say "She is hardcore!" Ah yes. It has been a great three months, and I am going to miss this family. But change is good. Change is healthy. And I think that I am prepared now. (Besides the actual PHYSICAL part of being prepared, AKA: Packing..) Today was, all in all, an AWESOMELY EPIC day. And since the girls and I plan on watching awesome movies together tonight... it's just going to keep being awesome. :) Jeg elsker mit liv.

Echo Killer Yankee Tango

:) Today was cool. Torben, a guy from my Rotary club, took me to work with him. He is in charge of Air Traffic Control at the Aalborg airport. So I spent the day in the control tower, and cruising the runways in the flashy light car. It was pretty awesome. The airport is half civilian and half military, which is cool because they split the costs for fire crews and things of that nature. So I also got to see some of the military side of things, which was interesting. We looked at a couple of old fighter jets, and where the military has their fuel stored, and the bunkers that the Americans built when we were terrified of Russians. Torben told me that they have to leave them there even though they don't use them because they're almost impossible to get rid of. So instead, they store tons of fireworks in them. He also told me that George HW built a bunch of them for Saddam back when they were buds, which caused the US Military a lot of trouble during the first conflict over there. Speaking of soldiers and conflict, I also something sad. Denmark has lost 39 soldiers in Afghanistan. I got to see a Royal Air Force plane bring home the most recent body. Saw them bring him off, too. From a distance, but.. still.. The flag at the main airport was at half mast too. Torben ALSO told me that there is a parachute club at the Aalborg airport. So Alex and I had the idea that maybehaps we could do a bit of skydiving. Haha. They offer a beginner's solo course and one jump as a package. Pretty awesome. So we'll see how that works out. Other than that.... the Harry Potter premiere was incredible. I move in TWO DAYS. Very exciting, very terrifying, VERY unprepared. I'll let y'all know how that works out. :)